


stay beside me where i lie

by idyll



Series: Mercury Verse [2]
Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Earth, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-10-06
Updated: 2007-10-05
Packaged: 2017-10-07 10:24:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 19,415
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/64225
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/idyll/pseuds/idyll
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ronon doesn't hate him, but John maybe hates himself, and Vala <i>definitely</i> does.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter One

**Author's Note:**

> Arsenicjade and tesserae_ both looked this over midway through to let me know if I was telling a story that anyone wanted to hear. I thank them for that because I might have let this fall by the wayside without their input. Tesserae_ also pulled beta duty on this and followed each individual thread in it with patience and care, then let me know where it took her and how it got her there. I thank her for that.

Ronon apparently broods to the dulcet sounds of Bjork.

This came as news to John mostly because Ronon doesn't look all that different than usual when brooding, but also because he didn't realize that that noise was supposed to be _music_.

Which was why, the first time it happened, he said, "Jesus Christ, are you _skinning a cat_ up there?" and ended up sleeping on the sofa, because _of course_ Bjork reminds Ronon of Satedan folk music.

*

John wakes up alone at three in the morning and frowns at the subtle wrongness of the shadows being cast in the immediate vicinity. He turns onto his back and squints blearily up at the skylight over the bed. It takes him a minute to recognize the dark shape along the side as the backlit spread of Ronon's dreads.

He pulls on a pair of boxers and a t-shirt and leaves the loft. He hooks a right just outside the door and follows the hall to the stairwell roof access.

On the roof, Ronon is stretched out on his back, shirtless, with one hand tucked under his head, which is propped on the skylight. The other hand is resting on his stomach, just above the waistband of his shorts. His feet are bare and crossed at the ankles, and his eyes are closed.

John's mouth goes dry at the sight. It's been three years since he and Ronon got together, and for the first year they were on Atlantis, where John had to measure the length of his stares, curb the instincts of his hands. Once they came to Earth it was even harder; everyone from Atlantis was being scrutinized and John and Ronon only saw each other for a handful of hours a week, and only rarely alone.

Then John walked away from the Mountain, the SGC and the Air Force, and for an entire year he didn't even see Ronon, just spoke to him on the phone.

It's only been in the last six months that John's had the freedom to look his fill without fear of a court martial. He still hasn't found words that do justice to the way Ronon looks stretched out half-naked like this, long-limbed and fit, with sinuous curves of muscle and skin that make John's fingers twitch to _touch_.

He remembers having to curl them inwards on Atlantis and in the Mountain. He'd shove them in his pockets or busy them with checking his weapon. But John doesn't have to hold back now, so he lets his hands stretch out towards Ronon as he crosses the roof.

Ronon doesn't acknowledge John's approach, but when John kneels beside him he bends one knee slightly so that it presses against John's thigh; John presses back and reaches out to pick up Ronon's iPod from the ground by his hip. _Army of Me_ is playing, and now that John knows he recognizes the faint discordant sounds coming from the ear buds Ronon's wearing.

John sets the iPod down next to Ronon's cell phone, and then undoes the snap of Ronon's shorts with lingering hands. That gets Ronon's attention; he turns his face towards John and opens his eyes, which glitter strange and pale in the smoggy night. John smiles, jerks Ronon's zip open and tugs the khaki material down and off, until Ronon is only acres of nakedness and alien adornments.

John lips Ronon's soft cock into his mouth and rolls it with his tongue, his nostrils flaring to take in the concentrated scent of Ronon; he still smells like sex and come from earlier in the night. Ronon cups the back of John's head, fingers pressing hard against it. His hand is large enough to palm John's skull, which John has _always_ found hotter than hell. He shudders, slow and drawn out, and groans lightly. The vibrations make Ronon's hips twitch minutely and his dick swell. John widens his mouth around it, backing off so that he can work the foreskin with his lips and tongue.

With the headphones still on and the music blaring in his ears, Ronon's groans sound strangely loud and elongated. He touches the side of John's face, fingers splaying lightly across his cheek, a ghost of a touch that isn't impatient or urging, just very much _present_. John's eyes close and he settles himself more comfortably over Ronon's body.

There's a sticky breeze blowing around them under the hazy sky, and it turns their skin clammy while John brings Ronon off in gradual increments, like a rubber band being stretched slowly and inexorably, until it finally snaps and Ronon comes, sudden and unexpected, and John has to swallow rapidly to avoid choking.

Ronon pants for air, looking young and exposed, and pulls John onto his thighs. His long-fingered hand nudges John's boxers down and then wraps around John's dick, stroking slowly and tightly, until John jerks forward and comes across his chest.

After John cleans Ronon with his t-shirt, they pull on their respective bottoms and Ronon tugs the buds from his ears and turns off his iPod. "Hey," he says quietly at the door that leads into the building. He wraps his thumb and forefinger around John's wrist, tugs him against his chest, and leans down.

Ronon kisses like he does most things: direct and unequivocal. John smiles against his mouth because it's something that John counts on and looks forward to and is never disappointed by. The smiling makes kissing pretty much impossible, but he can't help it, and Ronon huffs, amused, before dragging John inside.

*

Ronon never goes anywhere without his cell phone, for which he has about a dozen different accessories and attachments. It also has so many built-in bells and whistles that John couldn't even figure out how to answer the damn thing the one time he borrowed it.

It's almost always on. Especially in the middle of the night, because Cadman has really bad insomnia, Lorne's in Peru and tends to get access to phones at odd hours, and time differences mean that it's early evening for Zelenka and Miko.

John blinked when Ronon told him all that, had him say "hi" to Zelenka, and then went back to sleep because it was two thirty in the morning.

*

"What are you doing?"

John looks up from Ronon's phone and watches him drain a bottle of water in one swallow. "Looking for something."

Ronon hoists himself onto a counter in the kitchen, legs swinging lightly, and arches a brow. John gives up on the navigation menus and glares at the display. "Is there any way I can see all recent activity in one screen?"

Ronon's legs are long, which John sometimes forgets until Ronon does something like hook his calf around the back of John's thighs from halfway across the kitchen. John lets himself be pulled in, until he's standing between Ronon's thighs, which tighten on either side of his hips, muscles hard as steel under one of John's steadying hands.

John slips his hand under the hem of Ronon's shorts, stroking his skin absently and enjoying the rough tickle of Ronon's leg hair against his palm.

"What are you trying to find?" Ronon asks.

John shrugs, then stares at him. "Whatever it was that sent you up to the roof with Bjork."

Ronon narrows his eyes and then plucks the phone out of John's hand. A few seconds and the blur of a dozen passing menus later, he passes it back.

There's a text message on the screen: _sorry darling been v busy -kisses-_

John doesn't really need to scroll down to know it's from Vala, but he does anyway, mostly because he wants to check the timestamp. Two a.m. Odd, because she's not usually one of the night owls. He puts the phone down on the counter next to Ronon and rubs the tops of his thighs.

"Seems pretty innocuous to me, but I'm guessing it's not to you."

Ronon lifts one shoulder briefly, lets it fall, and makes a noise at the back of his throat. "She's been acting weird for a few weeks, and now she's avoiding me. Something's wrong."

The whole friendship between Ronon and Vala is really confusing. Typically, Ronon's explanation of how it came to be consisted of about ten short sentences that gave John a very vague overall picture of boredom and proximity leading to hanging out, followed by them being put on the same offworld team, but provided no real details.

John sort of suspects that they fucked along the way, at least once but probably a lot more, which Ronon will neither confirm nor deny because he refuses to answer any questions about his sex life during the year John was gone.

"So, do you have a plan?" John asks, because Ronon might brood, but never _pointlessly_.

"Maybe."

John nods and takes a small step back, his hands urging Ronon to slide off the counter. "Come on, let's get some sleep."

*

When John got back in touch with everyone there were a slew of visitors to the loft.

Interestingly, no one came _just_ to see John, and some people weren't there to see him _at all_. Cadman, for example, arrived with Elizabeth and barely said hello to him before settling in to watch something like eighteen straight hours of _Buffy the Vampire Slayer_ with Ronon.

That night, Cadman and Ronon fell asleep on the sofa, slumped sideways against each other with little care for personal space, and it was the first time John understood that Ronon hadn't been in stasis while John wasn't around.

*

The following week Ronon spends most of Wednesday on his phone. He uses his hands-free headset, which confuses the hell out of John since he can't figure out when Ronon's talking to him.

Late in the afternoon, Ronon comes ambling into the kitchen area, where John's sitting at the table with the newspaper. "Mind if Vala comes for a visit?" he asks, looking uncharacteristically hesitant.

John flips the paper shut, sets it aside and tries to figure out how to respond. Some people seem to find Vala's crude impertinence charming after a while, if not immediately, but John's not one of them. She gets on his last nerve. He's never said as much to Ronon, never would, either, but Ronon's not stupid. Neither is John: Ronon wouldn't be asking about this if he meant for Vala to stay at a hotel.

His first instinct is to say no--actually, it's to say _hell_ no--but he's watching Ronon get more tense with each passing second, like he's predicting the refusal and is bracing himself for it.

"Sure," John says instead, because, really, what else can he say?

Later, during Rodney's thrice-weekly call from Switzerland, his eye roll is almost audible. "Oh my god, you are so whipped."

"Shut up." John's not bothered by Rodney's assessment. After all, John's not the one sleeping alone. Also? Ronon's responding smile had been one of the wide sweet ones that always catches at John's heart.

"No, no, it's cute. Everyone thinks so. But, really, it wouldn't be so traumatic on either side of the equation if you had an apartment with actual _walls and rooms_."

"We like it here."

Rodney snorts. "Of course you do. Anyway, it's going to make the book on this even more insane."

John blinks. "Book?"

"The betting book," Rodney says like John's an idiot.

The betting was bad enough in Atlantis, but now that their lives aren't filled with terror and near-destruction, it's gone up a notch or twenty. John presses his lips together in annoyance for a moment and forces patience into his voice when he speaks. "Yeah, I get that part. I'm just not sure what the hell there is to be betting on."

Rodney makes a high-pitched noise. "Are you kidding me? Tell me you're kidding. Because, seriously. It's no secret that you don't exactly like Vala--"

John shifts uncomfortably. He actually feels faintly guilty that he isn't fond of what amounts to Ronon's best friend. "Well, I wouldn't say--"

"--no secret that she absolutely hates your guts--"

"Wait, she does?"

"--be trapped in that loft with nowhere to escape each other. It's going to be more exciting than the book on Heightmeyer's love triangle!"

"_Love triangle_?" John's voice is loud enough that Ronon, who's upstairs, leans over the railing to check on him. John waves him off and lowers his voice. "Rodney. Love triangle?"

"For god's sake," Rodney snaps, "I was not implying that there is a love triangle involving you, Ronon and Vala. I mean, I'm officially on record as being of the opinion that they never did it. But, oh, if you find out for sure, there are some bets that still need to be settled--"

John hangs up on him, which involves viciously stabbing the power button on the cordless phone. It's not very satisfying so he crosses the room and slams the headset on the charger base.

"I told you three times a week is too much to talk to him," Ronon calls down, and John thinks he might take that under advisement.

When John gets upstairs, Ronon is sitting against the headboard on their king sized bed, his thumbs moving like lightning across the keypad of his phone. John flops down next to him and scowls up at the skylight.

Ronon slides a bare foot down John's calf. "What'd he do?"

"Does Vala hate me?" John asks in lieu of a response.

Ronon shoots him a very quick, very unimpressed look. John sighs and wonders why this is news to him, because it shouldn't be. Ronon puts his phone on the bedside table, then rolls on top of John and looks down at him seriously. "I don't."

John looks away and fumbles awkwardly for the button on Ronon's jeans. "Yeah," he says roughly, "I know."

*

While he was gone, John called Ronon roughly every six weeks, but they didn't talk much during any of the calls. Mostly they listened to each other breathe, and John didn't make any promises (even though he wanted to), and Ronon didn't pile on the guilt (even though he could have).

At the time John thought what mattered was that he called and Ronon _took_ the call, but he's starting to realize that he's an idiot.

*

Two days later they wake up to dark skies and rain crashing down on the skylight and slamming against the wall of windows on the first floor. The rain tapers off quickly but the sky stays overcast and gray.

By noon it's become a little oppressive, with every nook and cranny of the loft touched by the dreary pallor that's coming in all of the bare windows.

It's making John feel gray himself, washed out and heavy with gloomy thoughts, and he winds up drinking an entire pot of hot chocolate before ten a.m. even though it's about ninety degrees out and hot beverages shouldn't be on the agenda. Comfort food knows no temperature boundaries, apparently.

Ronon, on the other hand, is getting more on edge as each hour rolls by, stomping around the place scowling at nothing and everything. John knows better than to try to get Ronon out of funks like this. It never goes well. In fact, it often goes _badly_ and sometimes _painfully_. He makes sure there's always half a room of distance between them, and does his best not to make more than fleeting eye contact.

By noon John's retreated to the "library" area under the stairs of the first floor with a book and his iPod, and is reading about wizards in Chicago while Johnny Cash fills in the silence around him. Ronon beans him with a throw pillow at two, and when John looks up he catches a glimpse of Ronon's back as he stomps out of the loft in his running shorts.

Five minutes later the skies open up again; John winces and sets a stack of towels by the door.

When Ronon returns, drenched from the rain, steaming from the heat, and scowling harder than ever, John is in the kitchen making sandwiches. Ronon dries himself off and strips down by the front door. John loses track of what he's doing and can only stare. Because--wet...naked...Ronon. Water's sliding off of him in rivulets, tracing slow and winding paths down his arms, chest, back and legs. John eyes a trail of water at Ronon's hip and licks his lips.

"What?" Ronon snarls.

John tears his eyes away from the long contoured lines of Ronon's body and finishes making another sandwich. When he's done he pushes the loaded plate forward. "Food?"

A grunt, followed by the slap of bare feet on the stairs, is Ronon's only response. John snorts, digs a turkey sandwich out of the stack on the plate, and takes it to the butcher's block table between the kitchen and living room areas.

He stares moodily out the window as he eats, his feet propped up on a chair. When he was younger, this kind of day meant board games at the dining room table, or blanket forts in the den.

Ronon, John thinks as the other man comes back downstairs in a dry pair of shorts and takes the _entire plate of sandwiches_ into the living room with him, is a man desperately in need of a blanket fort. He could crawl inside, hide away from the grayness, and scowl until the sky lightened and his mood improved.

"Hey, did you ever make blanket forts when you were a kid?" John asks, curious. Ronon, sprawled in a sulky boneless heap on the sofa, lifts his head so that John can witness his scowl change to a glare. "Um, okay, so then what _did_ you do on days like this when you were a kid? Any, like, games, or something?"

The glare deepens, Ronon's right arm twitches, and John looks at the clock: three thirty. He gives up and gets to his feet. "Fine, let's spar," he says and there's a _world_ of resignation in his voice.

Ronon's face creases with feral pleasure and he practically runs upstairs. John follows more sedately, not looking forward to the ass kicking he's about to get.

They have a small training area set up along one wall, with mats and some basic sparring equipment. John also installed some padding against the exposed brick wall after the third time he was scraped all to hell by it.

True to form, Ronon hardly gives John time to strip off his shirt and warm up before lunging at him. John mostly evades and escapes Ronon, letting the other man put forth all the effort, and hardly expending any himself. It works as a strategy to help Ronon blow off steam, and also reduces the damage John takes. The drawback is that, much as John likes to forget, Ronon is about a decade younger and has _much_ better stamina.

Half an hour in, John's tiring out and not moving nearly as quickly as he was at the start, and Ronon takes him down with a quick and cunning leg sweep. John lands flat on his stomach and reminds himself not to panic when he realizes he's knocked the wind out of himself and can't breathe.

Ronon crouches over him and presses his face between John's shoulder blades, licking and chewing John's sweaty skin so that John loses his breath again immediately after regaining it. Ronon drags his tongue up the side of John's neck and his voice is a rumble against the side of John's jaw. "I like you like this. Sweaty and shaky, and too worn out to do anything but take it."

He lowers himself onto John's back and presses his dick against John's ass. The thin material of their shorts does little to dull the sensation for John and he hisses with pleasure. When Ronon rolls his hips obscenely, John gasps and chokes. "_Jesus_, Ronon!"

He tries to get some leverage, but his hands and knees are slick with sweat and slide out from under him on the mat.

Ronon's hips jerk and he laughs, dirty and lewd, right in John's ear. "Just like that."

John has little enough resistance to Ronon when he's doing something as innocent as _sitting_, so times like this it's not a matter of _will_ he melt but how _much_. Today it seems to be completely and totally, and when he goes lax Ronon makes another satisfied sound.

"Yeah, that's _sweet_." Ronon skims a hand down John's sweat-soaked side and pushes his shorts down around his thighs. John groans against the mat, shoves his ass against Ronon's crotch and makes frustrated noises until Ronon's shorts seemingly disappear and--_oh_. "You'll take it, won't you?"

Ronon's voice is knowing and sly. He's already starting to push into John, who somehow relaxes even further and lifts his ass to get a better angle.

And this, being able to take Ronon like this, with no prep and only sweat and Ronon's precome to ease the way, is John's idea of _sweet_. This is something they never could have had on Atlantis, where they had to be careful, were lucky to get together once a week, and sometimes they had to wait so long that it was like doing it for the first time again.

"God, yeah," John sighs, shuddering around the girth of Ronon's cock, rippling down the length of it. Ronon presses his forehead into the back of John's skull, and when he's all the way in he goes still. They breathe together for long moments and then Ronon twitches his hips and moves.

Ronon fucks him slowly and carefully, mindful of the limits of John's body when they do it this way, and it's an exercise in holding back, in letting the pleasure find them instead of chasing after it hard and fast. Ronon's hips undulate rather than thrust, roll and slither rather than push and shove, and John shakes under him, open and accepting, and filled with a poignant regret he never can push aside at times like these.

When John comes it's with Ronon's hand around his dick, and Ronon's teeth in his shoulder. He clenches around Ronon's soft, sated dick and they both cry out.

*

Teyla wouldn't consider coming with them even though she refused to have anything to do with the newly staffed Atlantis. She said she would rejoin her people, try to build an alliance of those who would stand against the Wraith and, if it came to that, Atlantis itself.

She told John, before he left with Ronon, "Be careful with him; he is younger than we like to remember."

Sometimes, John has dreams that vaguely resemble nightmares, and in them Teyla just looks at him, her gaze weighted with disappointment and censure.

*

"I've got that new group starting today," Ronon says when John stumbles downstairs in the morning, sore in too many places to name from the sparring and the _two_ rounds of sex. "You said you'd come."

"Crap," John says succinctly from where he's hunched over a kitchen counter, clutching a bottle of water, and fumbling in a cabinet for painkillers.

John is officially retired from the Air Force and although he often half-heartedly thinks he should be doing _something_ he always inevitably remembers that he did _something_ for more than twenty years and is still recovering from it. So now he does a lot of little different nothings, and mostly he's okay with that.

He tries anything he's ever had just a slight interest in attempting. Sometimes that involves going through the Long Beach City College's non-credit course catalog, but mostly all he has to do is troll through the archives of the Atlantis ex pats mailing list. John's not the only one who is trying to fill in a lot of free time. The ex pats have put together actual _seminar presentations_ and _online courses_ on a variety of subjects--such as origami, horticulture and knitting, just to name a few.

Ronon, on the other hand, spent exactly two weeks living a life of leisure in California before he came home from a late night run and said, "I'm teaching women how to protect themselves tomorrow afternoon."

John had a moment of cognitive dissonance the likes of which he hadn't had since Atlantis and said, "You went _for a run_."

As it turned out, there was an interrupted mugging and a quick and dirty self-defense lesson at the feet of the unconscious mugger, and one of the cops on scene asked Ronon to volunteer his services for some classes the police and the Y were offering.

Ronon, unsurprisingly, took to it immediately. Empowering the underdog is his thing, and from what John's heard from Jess Daniels--the detective Ronon works with--women leave Ronon's classes loaded for bear. Metaphorically speaking.

"You're coming, right?" Ronon asks, eyes narrowing.

John straightens up and smiles determinedly through the low-grade systemic aching of his _aging body_. "You bet."

Ronon laughs and reaches over John's head into one of the cabinets. He opens a bottle of ibuprofen, pries John's lips apart with the pad of his thumb, and then slips three small pills into his mouth.

John swallows them down with his water and nods. "Give me twenty minutes and a shower and I'll be good to go."

Ronon swoops down and kisses him, fierce and forceful and brief. When he pulls back he stares at John with an intensity that John doesn't know what to do with this early in the morning before his analgesics have kicked in. "Thank you."

"Sure," John replies vaguely. He shifts uncomfortably under Ronon's serious regard until Ronon rolls his eyes, smiles, and pushes him out of the room.

When they leave a half hour later, John's feeling mostly human. They take Ronon's truck--a boxy old Jeep Grand Cherokee that was one of the few vehicles they found that could accommodate his legs--and John lazes in the passenger seat and watches Ronon drive.

In a way the whole thing is surreal: Ronon, dressed in black track pants and a white tank top, is _driving a truck_. John never would have imagined being here in this moment, but he's gotten used to it for the most part, and really enjoys it.

Ronon's hands are steady on the steering wheel and gearshift, comfortable and confident as he changes gears and maneuvers them down the freeway. He's told John that it was Lorne who taught him how to drive, and that makes sense because Lorne was a steady and competent 2IC, but he's also a flyboy, which explains why Ronon drives a mile ahead of himself, aggressive but always in control.

"You're staring," Ronon says suddenly.

John lifts a brow. "I like the way you drive."

Ronon cuts him a quick look and then smiles as he revs the engine and gets right up on the tail of the car in front of them, only to swerve to the side and cut off the car on their right.

John grins and slouches more comfortably in his seat. "Lorne teach you that one?"

Ronon shakes his head and bares his teeth, which is disturbingly hot. "Laura. She calls it Threading the Needle. She's really patient with explosives. Not so much with traffic."

"I'm sure," John drawls, and then Ronon's slipping seamlessly into the exit lane and taking them off the freeway and onto city streets.

They park a few blocks from the Y and walk inside just as Detective Daniels steps out of their assigned room and closes the door behind her.

"Ten in this group," she tells Ronon after nodding a hello to John. "Five domestic abuses, two home invasions, one carjacking, and two rapes."

John exhales heavily. Next to him Ronon grinds his teeth and nods grimly.

Most of the women Ronon works with are preparing themselves for something that _might_ happen. But when Daniels saw how well Ronon worked with his students, she asked him to also teach female victims of violent crimes, women who've already been through something.

"We're ready when you are," Daniels says and goes back in, leaving John and Ronon in the hall.

Ronon is a tense and looming mess. John nudges him with an elbow. "Hey."

"I'm good," Ronon growls immediately, then unclenches his fists takes a breath. "Mostly," he adds in a more normal tone of voice.

John nods, leans against a wall and crosses his ankles. "So, I was thinking we could stop for ribs on the way home."

Ronon frowns, clearly annoyed. "I won't say no, but I really am good. You don't have to..." He trails off with a significant look and John shakes his head.

"No, I know you're good. But I figured we haven't had ribs in a while." Mostly because as much as John loves Ronon, which is really a hell of a lot more than John will even admit to himself, watching him eat ribs is disgusting. "Plus that place you like is all the way across town." He wiggles his eyebrows and cocks his hip suggestively. "Which means it'll be rush hour by the time we get back on the freeway and I'll get at least two hours of watching you drive."

Ronon reaches out, almost lazily, and reels John in until their chests bump. He huffs impatiently but his eyes are light. "You're so weird."

John feigns offense. "Hey! _You_ like to watch me read. _That's_ weird."

Ronon nods. "You look hot in glasses."

He pulls open the door to the training room and John lets himself be herded inside by way of a hand splayed high on his side.

All of the women in the room look up when they walk in, and John knows what they see is a six and a half foot tall muscled giant of a man pressed intimately against a slightly shorter man, who is craning his neck back to look at him with amusement.

Ronon's hand is on John's side. John leans into the touch for a long moment, steps away easily and moves to the outskirts of the room.

And that's John's main purpose here: to make Ronon seem less threatening. Daniels helps further with that, since she's female and a decorated detective, and all she does is smile easily at Ronon. What also helps are the two women who already went through this course who are present; they wave at John and greet Ronon without fear or tension.

All of these things were Ronon's idea, because he's ferociously intent about working with these women and absolutely rabid about ensuring that they feel as safe as possible when they're here.

It's his new mission, and John doesn't have to ask why it's this and not any number of other issues. He doesn't need to. He's seen the new brittleness in Cadman's eyes and witnessed the way everyone, including _Rodney_, hovers around her protectively.

Daniels introduces Ronon to the new students and then turns things over to him. John props himself up against a wall and watches Ronon get down to business. He spent countless hours on Atlantis in training rooms with Ronon, watching marines get taken to the mat ruthlessly and without mercy, but this, this is different.

Here, Ronon isn't demonstrating new techniques to trained soldiers, he's teaching scared, violated women from the ground up. He's gentler, more patient, but still just as exacting and relentless. He doesn't shy away from physical contact to correct form but does it matter-of-factly and with his intent telegraphed plainly and openly.

A couple of the students burst into tears during the session, and it's one of the former students--Linda, John thinks her name is--who takes care of that; she's a licensed counselor and this is exactly why she still comes to these sessions.

By the end of the hour everyone is drained, in more than one way. Even John, who didn't do more than watch. The women stumble out on shaky, rubbery legs, somehow looking stronger for all their physical exhaustion. Daniels is the last one out and leaves after clasping Ronon's forearm tiredly. John crosses the room to the benches along the opposite wall and digs through Ronon's gym bag for a bottle of water. He offers it to Ronon. "Here, drink."

"Thanks." Ronon drinks deeply, then sits on the bench to wipe himself down with a towel. His tension is a lot subtler than it used to be, but John knows where to look: at the corners of his mouth and the set of his shoulders. It's there in spades today, just as John was expecting, and he steps up behind Ronon and pulls him back against his chest.

With Ronon sitting his head fits neatly under John's chin, and John brings him in close and waits the long minutes it takes for Ronon to relax against him.

Ronon tips his head back to look up at John. "You said ribs."

John nods, then bends down to brush his lips against Ronon's, upside down and awkward. "When you're ready."

Ronon tucks himself under John's chin again and says, "In a little while."

John puts his hands on Ronon's shoulders, strokes the tense line of his neck with his thumbs, and waits.

*

The thing is, John liked Vala in the beginning. When she came to Atlantis with SG1, John had found her sort of interesting and really hot. Later, during his six weeks stationed at the SGC, and then during his visits back from Pegasus after that, he'd dealt with her and _still_ liked her, though he hadn't known her too well.

It's only more recently that he's come to, you know, dislike her.

*

The next night, Vala breaks into the loft and _jumps_ into bed with John and Ronon at three in the morning, wearing nothing but a Hello Kitty underwear set.

John is tossed to the floor in the chaos of flailing limbs, the reaching for weapons, and the hugging. When he hauls himself back up it's to find Vala draped all over Ronon's bare chest, her cleavage popping out of a bra that's, seriously, at least a cup too small by John's estimate. Ronon looks happily resigned and that really doesn't help the situation in John's estimation, especially because Ronon is naked under the sheet that Vala is not-at-all-subtly trying to pull down.

"Wow, is it the twentieth already?" John drawls sarcastically, knowing full well that it's only the eleventh.

Vala grins like a demented and delighted child. "I had a change of plans." She looks at Ronon and her expression becomes more genuine in a way that John can't explain. It involves a softening of her features and the toning down of her smile. "It's not a problem that I came early, is it? We used to pop in on each other all the time, darling."

John waits for Ronon to point out that they don't live across the hall from each other anymore and phone calls are now required before showing up _nine days early_.

Instead, Ronon shakes his head, smiles, and reaches up to tuck Vala's hair behind her ear. "It's fine."

Vala tips forward on his chest and drops a chaste kiss on his lips. John tries not to seethe, but he can't help the way his mouth falls open when one of her hands disappears under the sheet in the vicinity of Ronon's thigh. "Hey!"

Ronon yanks her arm out from under the sheet right away, which mollifies John. Vala pouts and traces designs on Ronon's chest with her _other_ hand. John looks at Ronon, hoping to convey his increasing displeasure, but Ronon is studying Vala, his brows drawn together and his eyes narrowed.

Vala is smirking when John looks back at her. She winks at him--it's a mocking wink, John can totally tell--and then does something that presses her breasts against Ronon's chest even more.

John's hand twitches towards his thigh and a weapon he hasn't carried since the last time he was in Colorado Springs. That's not good, in fact that's a bit crazy, so he takes a breath and gets out of the bed again, grateful that he fell asleep with his boxers on.

He looks down at Vala and Ronon. "I'm going downstairs." Vala waggles her fingers at him in a goodbye and Ronon transfers the narrowed-eyed look to him. John tries to smile. "I'll just let you both...get dressed."

Vala looks at him from under a suspiciously artful fall of messy hair. "That's sweet, really, John." Her eyes are wide and innocent, and her tone is completely suggestive. "I think we're both fine just as we are, though."

John takes another breath and reminds himself that he cannot shoot her, no matter how much he wants to, and that, yes, he does in fact trust Ronon more than anyone else in the world. He feels a little calmer and manages to give Ronon a mostly steady smile before heading downstairs.

The front door is ajar and John rolls his eyes because, really, the least Vala could have done was close and lock it so that no one else could come waltzing in. When he tries to push it shut he notices a strap of some sort in the way. He pulls the door open wider and reveals what looks to be Vala's carry-on bag, which is on the floor in front of _fourteen pieces of luggage_.

John's calm goes flying out of the window, then, because Vala is only supposed to be visiting for _two days_

He grabs the cordless phone and flees to the kitchen, leaving the door wide open.

"Huh," Rodney says when John fills him in. "I think we've actually encountered a scenario that was not anticipated in the betting book."

If Rodney were here, John would _strangle_ him. "Fuck the betting book, Rodney! _Fifteen_ bags." His voice is a little wild and high-pitched, and he is totally hiding behind the cooking island. "How many days worth of clothing do you think that is? Like, three?" he asks with the sort of desperate hope he used to ask Rodney about sensor readings and Wraith hive ships.

Rodney's laughter is not reassuring and just as John's about to tell him exactly that, a shadow falls over him. He glances up; Ronon is leaning over the counter, frowning down at him.

"Um." John hangs up on Rodney yet again, then pulls himself to his feet. He's glad to see that Vala is not with Ronon, and also that Ronon is clothed in shorts and a t-shirt. When Ronon raises a questioning brow, John points in the general vicinity of the front door. "Luggage."

"I saw." Ronon's frown deepens and he reaches up to grab at the back of his neck, a newly familiar habit that goes hand-in-hand with his new way of carrying tension. He glances towards the door again before pinning John with a look that's apologetic and _torn_. "Something's really wrong."

"Any idea _what_?"

Ronon's brow furrows. "Some, not all." He shrugs one shoulder. "She's not talking but I've been chasing rumors. It's--personal. She needs...she needs a place to be for now." He looks John right in the eye. "I want it to be here."

And John understands, he does. He might not know how or why Ronon and Vala became friends, but that doesn't change the fact that they are, or that she's Ronon's closest friend outside of the ex pats. John knows that if it was Rodney who'd shown up like this, with that stack of luggage, he'd be giving the same look to Ronon and hoping for the same reaction:

"Yeah, it's okay, just--she has to wear clothes. At all times. That's a really non-negotiable point."

Ronon exhales in a way that leaves him looking light-headed with relief. John can't help but move around the island and reach up, bracket Ronon's face with his hands, and pull him down for a kiss that's slow and wet and full of everything that John always has such a hard time saying.

When he pulls back, Ronon blinks at him.

"Air mattress," John says. "And the screens. Because she is _not_ sleeping upstairs."

Ronon's "Yeah, okay," is slightly out of breath, and John smirks. Ronon is wrecked, just from a kiss, which is more than a little flattering. John turns to leave the room but stops when Ronon calls his name. "You know I wouldn't--you don't have anything to worry about."

His lips are still red and his eyes are still dazed. John nods readily. "Yeah, I know."

Vala comes downstairs while they're inflating the really expensive and very large air mattress they have on hand for occasions like this. Ronon's already set up the dividing screens, which were a gift from Cadman. She thought they should at least offer guests the illusion of walls and privacy.

They're taller than Ronon and the frames are a deep wood stain that looks almost black. The center panels are the color of blood oranges and along the right side of each is a dark red cherry blossom pattern. There are five screens altogether and they're arranged in the far corner of the downstairs in a lopsided circle, in the space next to the stairs.

That space is usually where they keep the fetish thing that Elizabeth gave them, their mountain bikes, John's skateboard, and the skeletal remains of Rodney's housewarming plant, all of which they have relocated next to the big chair by the alcove that houses their bookshelves.

Vala saunters up to them wearing what looks like one of Ronon's t-shirts, which hangs oddly at her shoulders and falls to her knees. "What kind of ice cream do you have?"

Ronon bends down to fiddle with the air pump. "Check the freezer."

John goes for bedding, catching sight of the clock along the way--three-thirty. Crap.--and when he and Vala pass each other she gives him a flinty smile. Double crap.

For a few minutes the only sounds in the loft are the air pump doing its thing and Vala scavenging in the kitchen. John's trying to figure out what they can possibly do with all of her luggage when she calls out to them.

"Where are your sundae fixin's? I've found some chocolate sauce--" John chokes on nothing at all; they've used that exactly once and it wasn't on ice cream. Or any other kind of food. Beside him, Ronon makes the same happy noise he did when John used the chocolate sauce. "--but there are no chopped nuts, fruit toppings, caramel or whipped cream. Most distressingly, I haven't found any _ice cream_."

She appears in front of them moments late, arms crossed and her face screwed into an unhappy frown. With the way her small frame is dwarfed by Ronon's t-shirt, she looks more than a little ridiculous.

Ronon lifts a brow, less annoyed than amused by her attitude. "You came early."

Vala pouts and--John can't believe it, because, god, who does shit like this?--_twirls a lock of hair around a finger_. "I really had my heart set on a sundae bar, Ronon."

John doesn't know how it started, but Ronon did explain that sundae bars are a tradition for them.

Something in Ronon's expression shifts and he seems indulgent. "We can get it tomorrow."

Vala wanders past them and goes to the door, opening it and leaning out to drag two bags in. She shoves her discarded clothing off the top of one and digs through it, emerging triumphantly with a small unmarked bottle. She waves it at Ronon, whose eyes get very wide.

"Is that--"

Vala's grin is full of too many teeth. "Suruvii rotgut. I was there last week and Chieftain Tkacht turned over a bottle of the extra potent stuff when I told him it was for you."

Ronon licks his lips like his mouth is watering. That's usually a look reserved for John and he tries to tamp down on the jealousy by reminding himself that Ronon is allowed his own experiences and moments separate from John. It's something he's had to remind himself of a lot in the last six months, and one day the lesson might finally stick.

"What do you want?" Ronon asks, obviously negotiating, and in a way that makes it seem like this is another tradition.

Vala swings the bottle from two fingers; Ronon's gaze tracks the movement and he stares at it like he's dying of thirst. "I want my promised sundae bar. Now. Oh, ooh, and some of those frozen waffles. The thick Belgian kind, not the skimpy buttermilk ones." She bounces on the balls of her feet and smiles sweetly. "You know the ones I like, darling."

Ronon straightens from the air pump and tries not to look like he's already proven himself to be the desperate party in this trade negotiation. John snorts and takes over with the mattress.

"It's the middle of the night."

It's a weak argument and Vala is like a shark that smells Ronon's blood in the water.

"I believe there must be more than one all night grocer in this city of yours." She pauses, and then coyly adds, "Do you know what sort of government exemptions I had to procure to take this on a plane? For some reason airlines dislike transporting nameless liquids." Ronon fails to seem unimpressed. Vala opens the bottle and inhales deeply. "Mm, smells like burning offal."

Ronon reaches out eagerly. "Okay, fine."

John catches a whiff of the stuff when she hands it off to Ronon and almost gags. Vala notices and looks far too smug as she confides in an undertone, "The smell is even more potent when it's being sweated out. And then there's also the flatulence."

"Gee, thanks," John snipes and steps down a little too hard on the foot-pedal for the air pump. There's an ominous crack. Vala's smile turns pleased. Ronon doesn't even notice because he's apparently trying to shove his nose in the bottle.

*

The other thing is, Vala liked John in the beginning, too. When John was floundering and confused after the first time he was exiled from Atlantis, Vala made an effort to get to know him. At one point she even dragged Mitchell over to John's apartment with several cases of beer and a few pizzas. Vala also offered an overture or two the second and final time John left Atlantis.

John thinks it's good--better than good, in fact--that Ronon has friends who care enough to be scornful and righteous on his behalf. He doesn't think badly of Vala for that. God knows that John himself is scornful on Ronon's behalf, which makes for an odd sort of self-loathing that John's never been all that comfortable contemplating.

*

When John wakes up the next morning Ronon isn't in bed with him. It's not unusual for Ronon to wake up first, but John doesn't think Ronon came to bed at all, and that's a little unnerving.

He stumbles downstairs and sees Ronon sacked out on the couch. The television is on, tuned to TVLand, and Vala is in the kitchen. Making pancakes. She's still wearing Ronon's t-shirt, and her hair is in pigtails.

When she sees John she jauntily waves hello with a spatula, then holds a finger to her lips and whispers, "Ssh. He only got to sleep a short while ago."

John stares at her grinning face for a moment before he turns on his heel wordlessly, skirts her stack of luggage, and shuts himself in the bathroom.

Things only go downhill from there. Vala spends most of the day draped over and across and on top of Ronon every chance she gets. John tries to stay out of the way, mostly, but the truth is that Rodney's right: there are no actual _rooms_ in the loft and escape is near impossible.

Also, he has sort of a hard time letting them out of his sight considering all of that draping, which he _knows_ is Vala's way of poking him with a stick but which he can't seem to ignore entirely.

On day two Ronon is sweating out the most foul smelling substance John has ever encountered--including the boar-giraffes on 291--while John stays upstairs for most of the day with his laptop.

There's an email from Elizabeth. She's been doing diplomatic work in Africa for longer than John and the others have been back on Earth. Ronon has a map of the continent on which he's marked all the countries she's been to. There are a lot of them.

Whenever she emails pictures of the latest leg of her seemingly never-ending peace mission she always includes long and winding tales about the people she's met, the work she's pouring herself into.

Even when she's been under gunfire by hostile rebels, even when she's had to walk twenty miles through jungle, John can never see even a fraction of the stress and tension she carried with her on just an ordinary day on Atlantis.

John's return emails are far less interesting in comparison, but Elizabeth always seems happily invested in hearing about his hobbies or his and Ronon's day to day mundaneness. John thinks she uses them to vicariously live a quieter, more ordinary life. He's never before been anyone's go-to person for that kind of thing; it's kind of nice.

He hits reply when he's done reading and catches Elizabeth up on the last month of their lives, asks when she expects to be back in the states, and congratulates her on making CNN. Again.

He deletes without reading the two hundred and seventy-six emails in his inbox with updates on the Sheppard-Dex betting book--living it is bad enough, really--then sets up a filter to send any future emails on the subject to the trash automatically.

He goes downstairs, planning on scavenging some lunch, and gets there just in time to see Vala leap at Ronon as he comes out of the bathroom. He's apparently showered and just has a towel slung around his waist. Vala moves swiftly, one hand reaching out to pull the towel away from his skin while she uses the other to shove her camera in the gap and snap a picture. Ronon twists away and manages to keep the towel around his hips while dislodging her.

"You must have a dozen of those shots by now. Is it ever going to get old?" Ronon asks, put-upon but not angry.

Vala bounces in a circle while fiddling with her phone. "Never, darling."

John clears his throat. Vala smirks at him again, and if John were a petty man who kept track of such things he'd say it was her twenty-third smirk of the visit. But he's not. Really.

Ronon gives John one of those patented unimpressed looks of his that speaks volumes about what he thinks of John's maturity level.

John shifts, irritated and maybe a little chastised, though he'll never admit it. "I'm, uh, going to the grocery store."

He wasn't planning on that, exactly, but he thinks that getting out of the loft might be a good thing right about now. Besides, they need food. They've made do with several visits to the corner store in the last day and a half, but considering that Vala seems to eat like an army of teenager boys and has not even hinted at when she'll be leaving, they need to stock up. A lot.

An hour later he has a shopping list a mile long that includes _feminine hygiene products_. "I didn't buy these for my wife, Ronon," John snaps. Vala has conveniently ducked into the bathroom to shower. "No way am I--"

"Stop letting her get to you."

John shoves the list in his pocket and heads for the door. "Easier said than done." Ronon grabs the back of his shirt and jerks John against him. "Also, I'm getting kind of tired of you hauling me around, by the way."

Ronon presses his forehead against the top of John's head. One of his hands settles on John's abdomen, palm flat and fingers spread. "No, you're not."

John leans more of his weight against Ronon. He can feel the pulse at Ronon's wrist on his stomach. He feels forced to admit, "No, I'm not."

"John. Relax."

"I'm trying, I am. She's just...really disruptive."

Ronon's fingers dig into John's stomach, sudden and tense. "I won't tell her to go."

John knows that for a lie, but he can make it the truth, so he does. "I'm not going to ask you to."

Ronon's fingers ease up. He touches his lips to John's ear. "Remember you said that."

John shivers and reaches back to grab onto one of Ronon's thighs. "You might have to remind me."

"Yeah, okay."

Ronon lets him go with a lingering kiss to his temple and John checks for his phone, keys and wallet before heading out.

He calls Rodney from the cereal aisle. "I need you to chase some rumors."

"What? Sheppard? Wait. Oh my god, what _time_ is it?"

"Barely even midnight where you are. Were you seriously sleeping?"

"I might have been, yes, because some of us aren't shiftless _slackers_ and actually _work_ for a living, Mr. Stitch-And-Bitch."

John drops five different varieties of breakfast cereal into his cart and stops to peruse the Pop-Tarts. "No need to be rude."

Rodney huffs in annoyance. "What is it you need, Sheppard?"

"Rumors. About Vala."

"What kind of rumors?"

Three flavors of Pop-Tarts go into the cart, along with a box of Rice Krispies cereal bars because Ronon is fascinated by the layer of milk-like substance.

"Anything that might explain why she's camped out in my house taking pictures of Ronon's dick." Rodney is quiet. Suspiciously quiet. John decides that he hates _everyone he knows_. "Who the hell just made money on that?"

"Er, Cadman, actually, but only because she laid odds on it happening before the third day, and Lorne said on the fourth."

John's in the bread aisle, now, loading up on English Muffins and fancy wheat bread. He swings a loaf of the latter into his cart so hard that he crushes it against a box of dried pasta and has to fish it out and get a new one. "Damn it, Rodney."

"Hey, it's not like no one else puts up with this, okay? And you can't blame me just because I'm maintaining the book. If it wasn't me it'd be--"

"Rumor chasing." Keeping Rodney on task is still a damn chore.

"Yes, about that. Radek would be the person to ask. His connections within the SGC are currently better than mine. Now, can I please go back to sleep?"

"Yes, go. Sweet dreams, Meredith."

"Oh, that's just--"

John ends the call, then leaves a voice mail on Zelenka's work phone, since it's far too late in Kyoto to call his home for a non-emergency.

*

Cadman's the vice president at a large security firm headquartered in Los Angeles and business brings her down from the Seattle branch at least once a month. She hasn't stayed at the loft since her first visit, though: the openness of the space bothers her, and she prefers more walls and fewer windows.

When she's in town it's not uncommon for Ronon to stay at her hotel with her. John's always invited but he forces himself to politely decline. Cadman isn't watchful and wary around him but she is so obviously more comfortable with Ronon that John feels like a third wheel.

The betting book gives eighty-twenty odds for Ronon and Cadman having slept together. John tries not to think about it too much and mostly succeeds.

*

"Laura needs a tactician," Ronon says on day eight of Vala's visit. "Three days. Based in Seattle."

John looks up from his laptop and scowls. "Are you kicking me out?"

Ronon rolls his eyes and tosses John a sheaf of papers. It's an email from Cadman that starts out with: _Might have a solution for the tensions. I've got a job hitting this week and I could use someone who can assess and coordinate multiple--_

"You're kicking me out." If John sounds a little petulant, he figures he has a right. This is his home, and Ronon is his...well, significant other, for lack of a better word. That he's being asked to vacate the premises because of Vala's presence is worthy of petulance.

Ronon, however, is not letting John get away with it. Which says a lot about how far he's been pushed this last week. Ronon is actually one of the most impatient people in the world _except_ when it comes to John, in which case his patience and ability to out-wait is normally legion.

He leans over John until they're nose-to-nose. "You're going nuts--" John opens his mouth but Ronon covers it with one huge hand. "--and Vala's using you as a distraction." He jostles John's head and looks very much like a man at the end of his rope. "Go help Laura for a couple of days before I strangle one of you. Please."

It's not even the please that does it, that's the sad part. In the last six months John's found that he's lost his ability to say no to Ronon when it comes to, well, _anything_.

John packs while having an hour-long conversation with Cadman, during which he asks questions about the basic specs she sent and she has her assistant book him a flight to Seattle.

Ronon comes upstairs just as John's hanging up and zipping his bag shut. He has a determined look on his face, and in short order John is sitting on the edge of the bed, and Ronon is kneeling in front of him sucking his cock fast, dirty and really, really wet. John comes an embarrassingly short amount of time into it, which he blames equally on their Vala-imposed celibacy and the stick of Big Red gum in Ronon's mouth.

John pulls his fingers out from the tangle of Ronon's dreads, then tips backwards, boneless and dazed. "I love sneak blow job attacks," he says, nonsensical and giddy. Ronon rolls his eyes. John gestures him onto the bed because Ronon obviously managed to find some way to keep Vala the hell away from them for the moment and John really wants to finish taking advantage of it. "C'mere."

Ronon straddles his chest and slips his dick into John's mouth. John shudders eagerly under him, trapped and pressed down with Ronon's solid weight, and urges Ronon to fuck his mouth. He does so with uncompromising thrusts that aren't too forceful for John to handle at this angle but which will leave the back of his throat the slightest bit raw. When Ronon comes it's with a faint whimper that makes John's chest _ache_. He pulls Ronon down, lets him collapse against his chest, and they stay that way until Vala yells up to them a half hour later.

"I took the liberty of calling you a cab, John. It should be here any minute now."

Their arms tighten around one another and they take another minute for themselves before putting their pants to rights and getting out of bed.

John picks up his bag and shifts uncomfortably. The last time he stood in front of Ronon with a bag in his hand it was a little over a month after the IOA cleaned house and sent John--and many, many others--back to Earth.

John said: "I resigned," and "I need to clear my head," and "I'll call."

Ronon said: "It's okay."

It was more than a year before they stood in front of each other again.

"Three days," John says. "That's all."

Ronon steps up and presses his forehead to John's. He doesn't close his eyes and this close John can see the intricacies of the brown of his irises, swirling and shifting hues that range from honey to chocolate.

"John." John closes his eyes and inhales, shaky and wet. He drops his bag and clutches at Ronon's sides, hands fisting the material of his shirt. Ronon's voice is a rough caress, and his breath is scented with John and cut with cinnamon, spicy and heady. "It's okay."

John tips his face, seeks Ronon's mouth blindly with his own, and Ronon's hands settle on his shoulders, thumbs circling on John's collarbones. The cinnamon flavor of Ronon's mouth is overpowering, sharp and intense, and it strips John's tongue raw to match his throat.

He licks his lips when they break apart, then picks up his bag and nods.

Downstairs, Vala is looking far too cheerful for John's liking. "There you are! Your cab is here. Mustn't keep it waiting." She shoves a lightweight jacket at John. "It gets cold on planes, you know. Do you want to borrow my neck pillow? It's very comfortable." She doesn't wait for a response, just dumps that, too, into John's arms and then pushes him towards the door. "Now, you'd best be going. Don't want you to miss your flight. Don't worry, I'll look after Ronon. Again."

John freezes and Ronon spins on his heel and glares at her. Vala doesn't even seem to realize that she's miscalculated this time. Ronon is...far too loyal to those he thinks deserve it and John's been at the top of that short list longer than they've actually been together.

Vala twitches slightly and for a moment John sees past the face she's worn the last week and finds a wide and terrible _fear_. He grabs Ronon's arm and stops him from stomping over to her. Ronon glances at him and John shakes his head. Ronon jerks his arm away, seemingly more frustrated by John than by Vala in this scenario.

"I didn't mean that the way it sounded," Vala says, far too casually to actually be casual. Ronon ignores her. She looks at John. "I mean, just because you're taking off again, suddenly and without prior notice, is no reason--" Ronon's teeth are literally bared in a snarl. Vala realizes her fuck up then and stops speaking. She turns on her heel and hurries into the living room. "Right. I'll just be over there."

John touches Ronon's arm again. "Hey. It's--I'm only going because you asked me, not--"

"I know." He meets John's eyes. "She doesn't know what she's talking about."

John shrugs uncomfortably. "I should go. You know, unless you want me to not go, because that's cool, too."

Ronon smiles. It's tired and faint but pleased. "Go."

"Three days," John says again. "That's all."

"I _know_."


	2. Chapter Two

Rodney didn't take his firing with any sort of dignity. From what John has heard from Zelenka--who was his lab snitch on Atlantis and is used to giving John the lowdown on Rodney--there was a period of time in which Rodney actively lobbied for his job back.

When he was refused, he took desperate measures and began _stalking_ members of the IOA. Eventually he was arrested and it was only some fast-talking by Carter and Elizabeth that kept him out of jail.

That was about when Rodney finally accepted reality and took himself off to CERN. Before he agreed to their offer, though, he made them give him three days a month off so that he could fly back to Colorado Springs every four weeks.

*

"Oddly enough," Rodney says with great impatience, "I do not, in fact, have any idea what 'I _know_' might mean in Ronon-speak. Ask Cadman about it. They used to have sleepovers and braid each other's hair, so she'd probably know."

John, sitting at the gate and waiting for his flight to board, covers his face with a hand and hunches in his seat. He thinks he might have something of a codependent friendship with Rodney, considering that he never thinks twice before making calls like this and blurting out every emo thing on his mind. And Rodney, well, John talks him through middle-of-the-night anxiety attacks and mid-day personnel issues on a regular basis without finding it odd. But, still. "I can't believe my life has come to this."

Rodney's snort is completely without sympathy. "Well, far be it for me to beat a dead horse or rub your nose in it, but it's entirely your fault. Also--hunh."

"What?"

"Oh. Well. It seems that Lorne just made two thousand dollars--US--on that parting scene in your apartment." John doesn't _even_ know what to say because, really, would anyone? "I knew we should have disqualified him. He knows Vala too well and that gave him an unfair advantage over the rest of us."

"I'm hanging up on you now," John says very seriously.

"Oh, that's just great, you call me at all hours of the night to whine like a little girl and then you just--"

They start boarding John's plane not long after he ends the call. He sleeps the whole way and thinks it's sad that he can sleep better on a packed plane than in his own home of late. He wakes up when they touch down in Seattle and is one of the first people off the plane.

A black-suited driver is waiting for him just outside of the terminal. John follows her to a limo. He loads his bag into the trunk himself and nods his thanks when she holds open the door. Cadman is already in the limo and she grins when he slides in.

Her hair is shorter than it used to be, cut in a blunt line at chin-length, and dyed light brown. It's a severe and not entirely flattering hairstyle, and the color has a tendency to wash her out.

"Hey, Sheppard. Good to see you."

He's asked her to call him John a few times but she always refuses, just like all of the other ex pats.

"Hey, yourself." John smiles at her. Not the small, meaningless ones that he doles out to most of the world, but the genuine ones he saves for the people he gives a damn about. She's actually someone he might offer a hug, but he never tries. Cadman's personal space bubble has expanded and John thinks it would be shitty to try to encroach on it. "Thanks for the rescue, even if it was for Ronon's benefit."

Cadman nods at the driver and the limo begins moving at the same time that the privacy screen between the two compartments closes. She gives John a look of idle amusement and then rolls her eyes. "It was for _my_ benefit, actually. Staging simultaneous security breaches in six buildings in three states is complicated, and I'll be glad for your help."

John stretches his legs out and slouches in his seat. He doesn't entirely believe her motives are so selfish but he nods anyway. "How've you been?"

She shrugs, nonchalant and uninformative. "I'm good." John might be concerned but he sees the lack of tension on her face and decides to take her at her word. She twists in her seat and lifts a leather case from the floor. "This is for you. Company issue laptop. Comms. An up to date briefing packet and CVs for the teams." She glances at her watch. "Get to reading. You're running a troubleshooting-slash-problem solving meeting in an hour."

John stares at her, disbelieving. "I think I was better off at home."

"Oh, I highly doubt that. From the payouts I've seen on the book--" John _hates_ that damn betting book and all the compulsive gamblers who participate in it and are making money on his personal life. "--this is going to be far more relaxing than your loft."

John kind of agrees but refuses to admit it. Instead, he cracks open the briefing packet and pretends he doesn't hear Cadman laughing at him.

The planning that's been done for the op is impressive, and the briefing is concise and easy to read. All of that being said, everything he reads confirms the first thought he had when he was talking to Cadman on the phone: this is going to be a logistical nightmare. John's first order of business when he realizes just how much this is going to suck is to go through the CVs so that he knows what he'll have to work with.

He's not surprised that he recognizes a good third of the names. After removing them from Atlantis, the IOA had arranged for get-out-of-the-military-without-fuss passes for the military contingent. John wasn't the only one to resign his commission. In fact, he was just the first of, well, _all of them_.

He huffs out a laugh. "Laura Cadman: Patron of Atlantis Military Ex Pats Worldwide. Has a nice ring to it."

Cadman looks away. "They're good men. I trust them."

There isn't any emphasis on the words or heat in her voice. Even so, John hears a significance that he can only guess at. No one talks about why everyone is so careful and watchful of Cadman, why the employees she works with most closely are female, or why she refuses to be in a room with only one exit.

John has his own ideas about what happened but he doubts he'll ever know the truth of it given that Cadman seems disinclined to talk about it.

"Good at what they do, too," John says after the silence goes on a beat too long. "I'm surprised Lorne didn't come out for this one; it's right up his alley."

Cadman's grinning when she looks back. "Well, I tried to get him, but David's at a crucial point in his work and there wasn't an incentive big enough to make Evan leave him."

John nods his understanding. Lorne is part of the security contingent for an expedition in Peru that Parrish is heading, and John knows from experience how seriously Lorne takes his responsibilities.

But then Cadman goes on to say, "They're still in that giddy honeymoon stage, you know? It's sort of sickening," and John realizes that, okay, he's a bit out of the loop.

"Wait. Lorne and Parrish. For real?"

Cadman gives him a look of astounded confusion. "You didn't _know_? That's--wow. It's been five months, and, seriously, it was _primo_ gossip. The only things that caused a bigger buzz in the ex pat grapevine were your reappearance, and Rodney and Katie's relationship going nuclear."

John looks down at the briefing packet and starts shuffling through it randomly. "I guess that's why Lorne resigned, finally."

Cadman is silent for a long time. Eventually, she says, "Not entirely." She clears her throat awkwardly. "Read up. We can talk more later."

Not if John can help it. He hadn't meant to say that, to say _anything_. Lorne is someone else whose relationship with Ronon was possibly more than platonic while John was off, in Rodney's words, "finding yourself like a 1950s housewife, except they had valid reasons--hello, oppression by the patriarchy!--for undertaking such an effort while _you_ were just being a selfish, inconsiderate _asshole_!"

To make matters more awkward, Lorne hasn't made any effort whatsoever to even _speak_ to John on the phone, much less visit, though he and Ronon are in contact on a semi-regular basis. That means something. John's not sure he wants to know what.

"We're here," Cadman says a few minutes later. John closes the packet and nods.

The meeting goes off relatively without a hitch, despite John's lack of detailed preparation. John has his time on Atlantis to thank for that because it made him capable of organizing an entire freaking _war_. One complicated op is nothing in comparison. Working with a large contingent of people he used to command and who know his style--just as he knows theirs--helps a lot.

Afterwards, Cadman's driver takes both of them to the five star hotel at which her company has several suites reserved.

"I'm down the hall from you," she says after handing off a keycard and preceding him into the lobby. John looks at her curiously and she shrugs. "I live outside of the city and traffic's a bitch. Staying here is easier, especially because of the early call. Want to hit the restaurant in the lobby for dinner?"

John nods. "Sounds like a plan."

"Let's meet down there in an hour."

In his suite, John settles himself on the bed and calls Ronon.

"You got in okay," is Ronon's greeting.

There's no censure in Ronon's voice, but John still feels bad. "Yeah, I did. Sorry for not calling you right away, but we went straight from the airport to a briefing." In the background, John can hear music. Loud music. "We're going to dinner--is that _Shakira_?"

Ronon grunts. "Vala put it on. She says she's going to show me how to dance from my hips."

John flops back on the bed and doesn't even try to hide his annoyed huff. "Of course she is."

Ronon sounds impatient and irritated. "Knock it off."

John's been trying to do just that but he's his own worst enemy when it comes to Ronon and this relationship of theirs. "It's just--you use your hips fine," John says earnestly. "Better than fine. Trust me on this."

Ronon laughs and John smiles despite himself. Ronon's laughter still isn't as frequent an occurrence as he would like, even if it does come more often than it used to.

The music gets a little lower in the background, like Ronon's walking away from it. "How's Laura?"

John shrugs. "Okay, I guess. Nothing stood out. Other than the, you know, usual." That would be John's not-so-subtle hint for Ronon to maybe share the story, which Ronon ignores, as usual. "Oh, hey, Lorne and Parrish? Do you know about them?"

"Yeah," Ronon says in such a way that implies: _duh, of course I know, everyone knows. Dumbass._

"Oh. Well, gee, thanks for telling me." John thinks he can see Ronon's blank yet oddly disapproving stare through the phone; Ronon never encourages John's pissy sarcasm. "I mean--look, can we maybe--"

Ronon sighs and says, softly and with many layers, "John."

John scrubs a hand down his face, takes a breath, and closes his eyes. "Hey."

Something happens on Ronon's end to cut out all sounds of music. John doesn't ask, just listens to Ronon breathe until it's time to meet Cadman.

"Thank you," John says before they hang up. He's calmer and more himself than he's been since Vala arrived at the loft. In a way it's sad that it took John traveling a few states away for them to reconnect like this, but he'll take it.

"I love you," Ronon says, plainly and openly.

John closes his eyes. Ronon's far more comfortable with the words, with the sentiment, than John's ever been, but he's been teaching John how to own them. Not just the words, but _them_. Him and Ronon. Them. We. Us.

"Yeah, I know," John whispers. It's important to him that Ronon is aware that John does know, very much, how Ronon feels. "Love you, too."

*

John might have been the first to resign his commission, but Lorne was the last.

There's a blatant significance to be found in the fact that Lorne didn't resign until a month after Ronon came to California to be with John. Unlike the Cadman scenario, John thinks about it a bit too much.

*

After the op, which goes off with as few hitches as can be expected, Cadman conspires with a group of ex-marines from Atlantis to get John _completely and totally_ shitfaced. It takes all of four drinks because John is a really cheap drunk nowadays.

Back at the hotel, John falls onto the sofa in Cadman's suite, a goofy smile on his face. "That was awesome," John says loudly. "The whole thing, you know? There were problems, yeah, but nothing big." He nods emphatically. "We work good together. Well. We work _well_ together."

Cadman rolls her eyes and kicks off her sensible and sort of ugly pumps on her way to the fully stocked wet bar. She also shrugs off the boxy blazer she's had on since four that morning when they set out to start the pre-op rundowns.

"You're cut off. I, on the other hand, really need a drink at this point. Listening to you wax saptastic at Ronon on the phone during the ride back here was--" She wrinkles her nose and tilts her head. "Okay, it was actually pretty sweet, but a little much. Especially because it was his _voice mail_."

John looks at her seriously. "He has to know that I know."

Cadman blinks at him and then downs a shot of bourbon in. "I'm sure that will make sense any second now." She claps her hands together once, take charge and on top of things. "I need to change. Why don't you start drinking some water? Should help keep your hangover manageable."

"That's a very good idea. See, this is why you're the vice president and I'm learning to knit."

She reaches for the bottle and her shot glass again. "Sheppard, you are so very lucky that I know how to keep my mouth shut. Seriously. Knitting?"

"Crocheting was boring."

Cadman nods. "Of course it was," she says on her way out of the room.

John hauls himself to his feet and only sways slightly on his way to the wet bar, where he snags several bottles of water. He drinks one down while he waits for Cadman to return. She comes back out a few minutes later dressed similarly to John in track pants and a plain t-shirt, and has pulled her hair back in a sloppy ponytail.

While John sprawls out on the couch, his water on the table in front of it, Cadman gathers up the bottle of bourbon and several cans of coke. She curls up in the overstuffed arm chair to John's right and uses the side table to mix herself a drink.

Cadman puts away three medium-strength drinks over the next hour, during which John's drunkenness lessens by degrees, which leaves them both the same amount of buzzed. She fills him in on the latest Rodney insanity (an attempted reconciliation with Katie) against which John's been insulated recently due to his own drama. John gives her the unabridged version of Vala's visit and feels vindicated when she takes his side several times.

It's after two when they start fading into a state of drained buzz, the likes of which brings too-serious conversation and revelations better left unrevealed. Which is John's only excuse for telling her about Ronon's _I **know**_.

She makes an impatient noise. "God, you're both so _special_." She stares at John dead on, her expression softening at whatever she sees on his face. "He knows you're not going to take off again, Sheppard. That's what he meant."

John swallows and the inside of his mouth is so dry that he chokes a little. "Oh. That's...oh."

"You asked about Evan," she says a short time later.

John shakes his head. "No, I didn't ask."

"Sheppard. Stop being a dick or I'll sic Rodney on you. You asked, in your own way." John reluctantly nods, mostly because he knows she'd really sic Rodney on him and, yeah, he'd like to avoid that. "Anyway, the question isn't, why did he finally resign? It's, why didn't he resign with the rest of us?"

John reaches for Cadman's bourbon and takes a deep sip straight from the bottle. His voice comes out rough and raw with alcohol and guilt. "Ronon."

She nods sharply. "We don't leave men behind."

But John did. He left the one person in the world he never should have left after having spent six years fighting tooth and nail to bring back enlisted men whose names he wasn't always sure of but who were _his_.

"God, I'm such a dick, you should totally sic Rodney on me."

"You're not. Really." There's a pause that feels deliberate before she continues. "And I prefer to save Rodney for when I really need him, because he's sort of criminally insane."

John leans forward, puts the bourbon down carefully and stares at it. "Cadman. What--"

"I was raped." Her tone makes it clear that she knows he'd already guessed as much.

John looks up because if she can say it, he can look her in the eye and acknowledge it. "I'm sorry."

Cadman draws her knees to the chest and manages to look fierce instead of small and balled up. "It was pretty shitty," she says flatly. "I was still in Colorado Springs at the time. Guy was a local. Twice my size and _trained_."

That actually explains most of what John never could make fit. Cadman is small of stature, yeah, but she's not easy to take down. John never could make it work when he thought about some random freak going after her.

"Military?" John asks.

She shakes her head. "No, just into a lot of competitive martial arts." She licks her lips and takes a breath. "There were some fuck ups in the investigation and he got off on a technicality." Her lips curl. "He _smirked_ at me when they cut him loose."

John's hands curl into fists and he breathes through his nose. "Christ."

"Rodney methodically destroyed his life with extreme prejudice." She smiles, cold and unpleasant. "I think he still pokes the bastard with a stick every once in a while just to make him cry."

"I'm surprised he's still alive." John snaps his mouth shut; he hadn't meant to say that.

Cadman just looks at him. "It was a close thing. On more than one occasion. For more than one of us." She glances to the side and then gets to her feet. "It's late, and we've got the post-mortem meeting at ten."

John takes the hint and stands. He's entirely sober now, and his head is pounding. He looks at Cadman for a minute and says, "Could I maybe, like, hug you...or something?"

She blinks at him, rolls her eyes, then steps forward and holds out her arms, presenting herself for a hug. John leans down and wraps his arms around her waist gingerly, careful to keep as much distance between them as is humanly possible during a hug. She stomps on his foot and jerks him closer.

"No, really, you're _special_," she reiterates. When she steps back a moment later she punches his arm. Hard. John doesn't bother holding back the flinch and she grins. "Get out. I'll meet you at the elevator at nine-thirty."

John salutes her and leaves.

*

A week or two after Ronon explained that he likes brooding to Bjork, John tried to offer an alternative because, honestly, _skinning a cat_. He hooked his iPod up to the stereo, pulled up his own personal brooding playlist and waited for Ronon to thank him and swear off of Bjork.

That didn't happen.

Instead, there was growling, pacing, and a somewhat trapped look before Ronon threw open the door and just...left. Without his keys, wallet, coat or weapons.

It was Elizabeth who told John that Zelenka bribed the SGC nursing staff to play Johnny Cash every time Ronon was confined to the infirmary for more than two hours, thereby conditioning him to dislike it. A lot.

"It was Radek's way of enacting some harmless revenge against you," Elizabeth said with careful neutrality, then arched a brow mockingly.

*

Ronon isn't at the airport when John's flight lands and John sort of stares around blankly for a while before doing the smart thing and pulling out his cell phone. It's still turned off from the flight and when he powers it up there's a voice mail waiting for him.

Ronon sounds ragged and hoarse, and the smallest bit harried. "You're going to have to take a cab home. I'll explain when you get here." The line goes quiet and just as John's about to hang up, Ronon's voice sounds one more time before the message ends. "Love you."

John blinks. Even with how comfortable Ronon is with the sentiment and the words, he doesn't say them lightly and casually. Which means that he does _not_ end messages that way without a reason.

While John's standing in the taxi line, he calls Rodney.

"Oh my god, I am not your relationship counselor!" Rodney shouts at him. "I have my own relationship problems, and they are far more concerning than your angsty mandrama!"

"Mandrama?" John repeats, nonplussed. "I…don't even know what that is." He shakes his head. "And, you know, I heard about your relationship issues from Cadman, and they don't seem--"

"I accidentally proposed to Katie," Rodney very nearly screeches.

"Again?" John rolls his eyes. "Rodney, you have to stop--"

"She said yes."

John drops his cell phone and almost gets kicked in the face by the person in front of him in line when he bends down to pick it up. This is the fourth time Rodney has proposed to Katie without meaning to. She's never given him an answer before because she knows that Rodney can tie himself into verbal knots and doesn't actually mean it. John has no idea what made this time different for her.

"Rodney, I don't--what are you--"

"And then I accidentally slept with Dr. Makarovska."

"_Again_?" John literally pulls the phone from his ear and gapes at it, because, seriously. John can parse the accidental proposals, but he didn't buy the "accidental sex" explanation the first time Rodney slept with Makarovska, the mathematical physicist who works in another department at CERN.

"And now she thinks we're _together_ and I can't even contemplate breaking up with her because one, we're not really together, and two, I'm a little concerned about a sexual harassment suit at this point. Women are _mean_ when they're scorned, Sheppard. Mean!"

John rubs his forehead, steps up to the front of the taxi line and then gets into the waiting taxi. "Do you even realize that things like this don't happen to other people, Rodney? You just--when did this all even happen?" he says, not without awe, because Cadman spoke to Rodney thirty-six hours ago and there was no mention of any of this.

"Yesterday. Everything happened yesterday." Rodney makes a whimpering noise. "I think I have commitment issues." John manfully doesn't say anything like _Duh!_ or _You think?!_. "All those years, I thought you were the relationship retard--"

"Hey!"

"--and here you are in a long term, committed relationship--with a man, no less--and here I am with accidental proposals and sex."

Rodney starts hyperventilating at that point and John talks him down as much as he can before Rodney declares that he has to get very, very drunk and just hangs up.

John scrolls through his phone book and has a brief moral debate with himself before calling Zelenka at his lab in Kyoto. He leaves a message asking Zelenka to email the book on Rodney and Katie. Zelenka calls back almost immediately and demands to know the relevant details from John and Rodney's phone call, and then throws numbers at John and makes him do stat conversions so that the book can be updated.

"You are on handicap," Zelenka informs him. "You know Rodney too well and he calls you often. But if you keep me in the loop, you get a portion of the take." He makes a noise. "Tends to be a few thousand dollars American for something like this."

"I don't--hey. Is Rodney doing that for me?" Zelenka hums, which is all the answer John needs. "Sign me up."

When the taxi pulls up to John's building Zelenka tells him something surprising. "I chased those rumors like you asked. Supposedly, Cameron Mitchell has gone off grid."

John has one leg out of the taxi and he freezes momentarily. "Since when?"

"Cannot be sure. Two months, at least. Most people believe he is still in Washington on a different posting."

Vala is not most people, though, and a lot of things are suddenly a little less foggy. "How do you know this?"

"Dr. Barinski told me. She's a chemist at SGC. She was one of Lorne, Ronon and Vala's fourths." Their fourth slot on the team had had a veritable revolving door for reasons that were wide and varied, from what John understands.

"Can you find Mitchell?" John asks.

"Highly doubtful. Very talented people within SGC have been trying and failing."

"Thanks for the information, Radek. Say hi to Miko for me."

"I will, and you are welcome. Stay in touch. Ex pats are very interested in Rodney's book."

John pockets his phone and makes his way into the building, hefting his bag and frowning as he thinks about what Zelenka told him.

SG1 was disbanded not long before the shake up on Atlantis, for similar political reasons. The team designator of SG1 was officially retired as a supposed show of respect at that same time, meaning that there is no current SG1 team and there never will be again. As for the team itself, Teal'c moved offworld; Jackson stepped back from the SGC except for limited consultations and is currently living in Egypt; Carter resigned, moved to Connecticut, and is working into the private sector; and Mitchell--now a full-bird Colonel--was made a liaison in Washington and commuted between there and Colorado Springs.

Vala, on the other hand, was assigned to the same offworld team that Lorne and Ronon would eventually join. Despite all of that, Vala is SG1. Just like John is Atlantis. Her team should have her back.

Further thought is halted when John opens the front door of the loft and walks into what looks like a disaster area. He drops his bag and stares around in shock. The place is trashed in ways that aren't incidental. John knows this because he's purposely damaged living quarters before and the end result was something like what he's currently looking at.

Broken dishes, overturned and broken furniture, torn paperback books, and a shattered window. That's the main damage, as far as John can tell. Oh, and the stylish room divider screens are a lost cause, he realizes sadly when he sees them flat on the floor, cracked and splintered.

With great trepidation John climbs the stairs to the second floor, bracing himself for whatever damage he'll find. Surprisingly, there isn't any. Everything is as tidy and whole as usual.

Well, _almost_ everything.

Ronon and Vala are asleep on the bed, looking more than a little worse for the wear. He's got a bruise on the side of his face that John figures was Vala's doing. Her eyes are puffy from crying to the point that John isn't even sure if she can possibly open them wide enough to see.

"Christ," John whispers quietly. Ronon's eyes snap open and find John almost immediately. "Hey."

"Hey," Ronon says, sounding more hoarse than he did on John's voice mail. "It got bad."

John nods. "Yeah, I noticed. She tell you anything?"

Ronon carefully pulls one hand out from under Vala and scrubs at his face. "Some, yeah. She just kind of…broke."

John winces at the lost look on Ronon's face. "Go back to sleep. I'll clean up downstairs. Don't--just don't worry, okay? We'll figure it out."

Ronon's eyes seem suspiciously bright, but he tucks his face against Vala's hair before John can get a good look. John moves to the side of the bed and leans over to press his lips to the bruise on Ronon's face; he's already asleep again and doesn't react. John hesitates, but then brushes Vala's hair from her face before moving away.

He takes Ronon's laptop downstairs with him and finds on it the contact list that one of the ex pats put together a while back. He calls Daniel Jackson and leaves a message on his voice mail. "This is Sheppard. Vala's practically moved in with Ronon and me. She's kind of a mess and Ronon's getting more worried about her every day. So, I don't know, could someone maybe get their head out of their ass and come help her out?"

He feels marginally like a good...significant other for having done something to try to help the situation, but mostly he feels useless to do anything about that last look he saw on Ronon's face.

He throws himself into cleaning and it takes him a good ten hours to restore the first floor of the loft to something resembling its usual state. Ronon and Vala don't stir the entire time, for which John is grateful. He ends his day by listening to the _Walk the Line_ soundtrack through the single stereo speaker that still works and drinking three beers.

*

The first time Vala visited Ronon at the loft, she brought him a large photo album filled with pictures from the previous year. Ronon smiled, hugged her, and then they spent the next chunk of time flipping through the pages and trading stories that, really, made no sense from John's perspective.

But he didn't need any stories to understand what he saw later when he turned the pages himself: Rodney, Ronon and Lorne sitting a table in the SGC mess; Ronon, Lorne and Vala looking red-nosed and sickly, bundled under blankets on someone's couch; Cadman riding Ronon piggy-back; Elizabeth, Zelenka, Miko and Ronon all dressed up and sitting at a cloth-covered table.

*

When John wakes up on the sofa the next day the first thing he sees is Vala's face because she's leaning over him and _staring_ at him as though she's about to, like, suck his soul from his body. Or something.

John flails in surprise. She leans back and sits on a footstool she's dragged over.

"I wanted to apologize," she says. Her voice is raspy and jagged, but sincere, and she meets John's gaze steadily. John pushes himself into a sitting position and rubs at his eyes, trying to clear the sleep grit from them. "My behavior last week was rather extreme. I think the proper term for what I was doing is transference. You didn't--well, you didn't deserve it."

"Yes, I did." John shrugs at her narrowed-eyed look. "I deserved a lot more than I got, in fact. He never really--" John breaks off because, no, he's not going into this with _Vala_ of all people. "Anyway, you don't have to apologize. It's okay."

"I'm also sorry about what I did to your home." Her face crumples and creases with what seems to be acute embarrassment. "I might have lost my mind for a bit, there. I'll pay to replace anything that couldn't be salvaged, of course."

John winces and thinks about the list of things that need to be replaced. He doesn't even know how he's going to explain to Elizabeth what happened to the gay fertility fetish thingie, which was really ugly but which she went to a lot of trouble to get for Ronon and him. "Yeah, that was sort of...yeah. But, mostly, as long as you don't do it again we should be okay."

"Good, because I would really like for us to be okay. Not just because it's unfair to Ronon for us to be at each other's throats but because--" She shrugs and sketches out a brief smile. "--we were actually rather friendly at one point, weren't we? I'm not imagining that, am I?"

John rolls his eyes. "We were friendly, and yeah, I'd like that too."

The next week of Vala's visit goes a lot better than the previous week, even though she's become somewhat--well, John doesn't want to call it _fragile_ because Vala is too strong of personality and features for that to fit. But she's something like fragile. She's quieter and softer and prone to sobbing on Ronon's shoulder, which is something that John seems to keep walking in on even though he tries really hard not to because it's really awkward.

John finds himself fielding half a dozen calls from Rodney per _day_, some of which Rodney makes while _hiding under his car_ and whispering. The Sheppard-Dex betting book goes blessedly quiet in favor of the McKay-Brown-Makarovska book, which gets so convoluted that John stops being able to comprehend most of what he passes on to Zelenka.

Things settle to something approaching normal. Vala starts going out on her own at least once a day to give John and Ronon time to themselves, though Ronon finds her digital camera sitting innocently on the dresser across from their bed one time, set to record video. He actually seems rather relieved by the gesture and takes it as a sign that she's returning to her usual self. John, however, starts undressing under the sheets.

Six days after John gets back from Seattle, Ronon and Vala head out to the early morning farmer's market across town. She likes to fill the loft with enough fresh flowers to give John allergies, and Ronon likes all the organic fruit. John sees them off with a request for fresh corn, which means they'll come back with bags and bags of vegetables, none of which will be corn, because that's just what happens on those outings.

When the bell rings, John assumes it's them and that they don't have a free hand between them to dig out keys. John buzzes the lobby door open, unlocks the loft door and leaves it slightly ajar, then returns to the task of replacing the pane of glass that Vala apparently punched out with her bare hand.

"Need some help?"

John startles at the unexpected voice and drops the new pane. It cracks into large pieces at his feet and he curses and jumps back. When he's clear, he spins around and comes face to face with Cameron Mitchell.

Mitchell looks his years, which isn't something John used to be able to say about him. His jeans and t-shirt are hanging oddly on him, too, like he's lost weight. Or muscle mass, John realizes when he sees the lack of definition in Mitchell's biceps.

"Crap. Sorry about that, Sheppard."

"What the fuck?" John snaps, and he isn't referring just to Mitchell's sudden appearance in the loft.

Mitchell's face goes blank as a slate and he tugs a duffel higher on his shoulder. "I heard Vala was here."

John stares at him, and it's...not at all like looking in a mirror a year and a half ago. Which, if he'd given it any thought, he would have expected.

Mitchell looks like he's been torn up inside and out and is still trying to fit the pieces of himself back together. When John took off it wasn't about anything other than being pissed that they'd taken Atlantis from him. Seems like Mitchell had a million better reasons for dropping off the face of the Earth.

"Put your bag down." John sighs, then rubs his forehead. "Vala and Ronon are out. Should be back soon. You want a beer?"

Mitchell looks so grateful when he nods that John pulls out the expensive Germanic import that Simpson--who's working for a think tank there--ships out to interested ex pats for indecent sums of money.

"You okay?" John asks when he trades the beer for Mitchell's duffel, which he then drops by the door.

Mitchell nods and takes a small, absent sip of the beer. He wanders into the living room and looks around, an odd expression on his face.

"This place is nice. Really nice." John refrains from mentioning what it looked like a week ago, and instead watches Mitchell look from the breakfast remnants on the table to the framed photos on the walls. "It's...homey."

John thinks about his first months on Atlantis, when the mist aliens played with his mind and he found himself in a tricked out bachelor pad. He thinks Mitchell was expecting something like that, and he would have been right a few years ago. But that place had been filled with ghosts and John's life now is fuller than that.

"Well, it _is_ my home. That was kind of the point of getting it."

Mitchell takes a breath, sucks the rest of the beer down in one large, breathless gulp, then stares at John. "Any advice on how I should handle this?"

"None at all." Mitchell opens his mouth and John raises a hand. "No, I get that it's a similar situation, but Ronon and Vala...are nothing alike. Also? Ronon didn't tell anyone but I _did_ keep in touch with him on a regular basis." Mitchell flinches and John grimaces. "You just disappeared without a trace, didn't you?"

"Kind of," Mitchell admits. He sinks down on the sofa and scrubs at his face with the palms of both hands. "I left her a note."

John actually winces on Vala's behalf and suddenly has a lot more sympathy for her because, _ouch_. Most of SG1 had moved on to various other cities, countries or worlds, and Vala was left behind, shuffled in with the last of the Atlantis unwanteds. And then _they'd_ left her: Ronon for California and John; Lorne for South America and, apparently, Parrish. All that remained in Colorado Springs was Mitchell, who was commuting and only around rarely, and then he'd taken off, too, and hadn't even bothered to tell her in person.

John sits across from Mitchell and sips from his own beer. "Jackson obviously knew where you were."

"No, he didn't. He just did the smart thing and called my parents." Mitchell looks frustrated and a bit defensive. "I'm not as much of an asshole as you seem to think. Vala didn't know where I was, but she could have tracked me down easily enough. God knows she's been calling my mother randomly for years."

"I think the point is that she shouldn't have had to."

Mitchell's face screws up in annoyance. "Are you enjoying the moral high ground, Sheppard?"

"I'm actually really not," John answers honestly. There's nothing about what he pulled with Ronon that he'll ever enjoy, even in retrospect or in comparison. He makes a face that feels like it matches Mitchell's expression. "It's not much of a high ground, anyway."

"No, it's not."

"Grovel," John suggests to Mitchell when the bell rings a few minutes later and Mitchell freezes in what is obviously panic. "Grovel a lot."

To Mitchell's credit, he tries. He really does. It's just that Vala takes one look at him, drops the bags she's holding, and goes after him with fists and feet. Ronon drops his own bags but then, with a lowered brow and curled lips, pointedly crosses his arms and doesn't interfere.

"You utter bastard!" Vala shouts. Mitchell dodges the hits he can't block and makes it very clear and obvious that he's not going to try to hit her back or restrain her. John finds it interesting that, even before Mitchell makes that clear, Vala doesn't seem all that concerned on either front.

"I'm sorry," Mitchell repeats over and over again, a constant mantra that he fits around her shouted insults and expletives. "Vala, I'm sorry, I didn't mean it. I'm sorry."

When Vala's fist connects with Mitchell's nose, John takes a step towards them. Ronon manages to circle around the skirmish and grab John's arm. "No. Don't."

John looks at the rush of blood pouring from Mitchell's nose. "But--"

Vala comes to a graceless and sudden halt, then. She and Mitchell are both breathing heavily, and she's staring from his face to her bloodied knuckles. "Oh. Cameron--oh, I--"

Mitchell gets to her before the first tear slides down her cheek. He pulls her against her chest and she starts _sobbing_. John thought he'd seen her sobbing before, but not like this. This is a full body shudder, loud and messy and from the pit of her very being.

She tries to shove Mitchell away but he's not having it. He traps her arms between them, wraps his own around her back, and refuses to let go, no matter how hard she struggles.

"I'm sorry, so sorry," he says, quiet and firm, and the look on his face says that it's the only truth he knows in that moment.

Vala gets her arms free and grabs at Mitchell, her grip white-knuckled. She presses her face against his neck, still sobbing. Mitchell's eyes close and his expression shifts to something that's simultaneously pained and comforted.

"I hate you," Vala sobs against his neck. "You're a terrible, horrible man. I hate--"

"I know. I'm sorry. So sorry."

John looks away and tries to breathe against the weight that's pressing down on his chest.

Ronon tugs at his arm. "Come on."

*

When Ronon came to California, John apologized for his disappearing act. Ronon brushed it off, basically said it wasn't necessary. As far as John's been able to tell, Ronon believes that down to his bones.

John doesn't. Not in the least.

*

John and Ronon go to the aquarium, which is actually Ronon's favorite place in Long Beach. He loves Shark Lagoon and he's seen the Monsters of the Abyss 3D movie so many times that the staff greet him by name and have his ticket ready and waiting when they see him approach. John would mock him for it except that he's getting a little well-known himself around the Catch a Wave exhibit.

They spend half the day there, wandering aimlessly and avoiding the aviary, which makes Ronon twitchy and hyper alert. They don't leave until Vala calls. Ronon's face during the one-sided conversation runs the gamut from stonily concerned to quietly pleased. When he hangs up he's smiling softly.

"So...?" John prods.

"It's good. They're good. And leaving." John returns Ronon's smile because he can't not.

Ronon drives them home and John stares out the windshield, his mind replaying the scene between Vala and Mitchell, just like it has all day long. When they get upstairs, Ronon makes a noise of frustration as soon as they walk in the door. He spins John around to face him and crosses arms.

John blinks. "What?"

"What's wrong? You've been...off all day."

John's very first instinct is to deny anything and everything, but he's been worn down in the last few weeks, been reminded of this very thing too often for him to have any resistance left.

"You never did that," John says abruptly. Ronon looks confused. "You never yelled like Vala did."

Ronon opens his mouth, shuts it, then reaches out and pulls John's sunglasses off. He studies John's face as he folds them up and hooks them on the collar of John's t-shirt.

"Vala was pissed. She hated Mitchell when she walked in here." John nods because, yes, he's well aware of that. Ronon frowns and says, clearly and precisely, "I never hated you. I wasn't even angry."

"You should have been!" John says, too-loud, too-sincere.

Ronon shakes his head. "You _wanted_ me to hate you?"

"Jesus _Christ_, Ronon, we were back on Earth for a grand total of a month before I took off! Call me crazy, but I think that had to _piss you off_."

Ronon makes a motion with his hand, like a knife slashing through air. It's sort of intimidating, but also kind of inappropriately hot. "This is why McKay calls you a girl, isn't it?"

"Rodney calls me a _girl_?" John asks incredulously, his face twisting. "He is such a--"

"Shut up." Ronon rubs his face and leaves his hands there, covering it. He sighs, sounding frustrated. "I didn't--when we were on Atlantis we dealt with everything in the training room. This is...hard. I don't know--"

Yeah, they had kind of always brought everything around to a physical sort of conclusion in Atlantis. It'd worked out pretty well for them, actually, but it's not an option any longer, and John has to make some kind of effort here because Ronon looks lost and confused, in more ways than John's ever seen.

"I should have stayed with you," John says in the silence.

Surprisingly, Ronon laughs, a thick sound that has nothing to do with amusement. He drops his hands and the look on his face is so fucking _wretched_ that John moves forward and pushes his way into Ronon's personal space.

"Do you know how many times--" Ronon croaks, then clears his throat and takes a breath. His nostrils flare and his hands fist. John reaches out, takes hold of his wrists gently, and circles his thumbs against Ronon's pulse points. "I was glad you left, that you didn't stay. Every day, I was glad."

John stares at him and Ronon reverses their hands so that he's circling John's wrists with his fingers, and presses his lips together until a muscle in his jaw is ticking.

"Listen," Ronon says intently, and curls his fingers tighter, jostling John's hands lightly. "I was under constant surveillance, and it took months before they let me leave the mountain without an escort. It was--hard. I didn't handle it well. We would have hated each other by the end of it. If we'd even been able to see each other."

John sets his chin, which is something he picked up from Rodney at some point. "I could have--"

Ronon shakes his head. "And we both needed to mourn, and I had to learn how to live here."

"There's more," John insists. "The way you said--something happened. Something bad."

John missed a lot that he regrets in that year--Rodney's meltdown, Cadman's trauma, Radek and Miko's wedding--but he doesn't think he could live with himself if he missed something important of Ronon's.

Ronon shakes his head and tightens his grip on John's wrists. "Not to me, and it's not mine to tell."

"I'm still sorry." Ronon drags him forward until their chests bump, then dips his head down and presses their foreheads together. "Sorry, sorry, sorry."

John keeps saying it until Ronon's mouth settles onto his, rough and demanding and full of everything Ronon's so quietly comfortable with and which he's been teaching John to find comfort in, too.

John doesn't realize they're moving--that Ronon's moving them--until his back comes up against the brick pillar by the kitchen. John sucks at Ronon's lips and tangles his fingers in the material of Ronon's shirt, holding on harder than he ever remembers holding onto anything else. The sounds that Ronon utters into John's mouth are sweet and wet and as familiar as John's own breathing.

John swallows them down while Ronon opens John's pants and pushes them and his boxers down. John hangs from Ronon's shirt and lips, toes his shoes off and kicks his clothing away, and he's maybe shaking, he's not entirely sure.

Ronon's hands slide down and hook under the back of his thighs, and John was getting there, was on the cusp of searing arousal, but that sends him there so fast and immediately that he _whines_. Ronon lifts and John wraps his legs around Ronon's hips.

"Quiet," Ronon whispers into his mouth, and he realizes he's repeating his apology again.

John pushes his tongue between Ronon's lips, tries to muffle his words until he can stop trying to speak them, but Ronon has other ideas. He leans back, leaving John propped against the pillar, and works at his pants with one hand while digging in his pocket with the other for the lube he's taken to carrying around; they never did know when Vala was going to give them privacy. To keep himself quiet, John bites his lip hard enough that he's worried about drawing blood until Ronon's thumb touches his mouth firmly and tugs it free.

Then Ronon's hands are on John's legs again, hoisting him up and tipping his hips. John grabs at Ronon's shoulders, digs his fingers in and finds his balance just in time for Ronon's cock to slide inside, slick and smooth and _right_.

The pace Ronon sets is forceful and unforgiving. It drags John along the raw brick, his back only minimally protected by his t-shirt, and drives the breath from his lungs. Ronon's hands are curled tight and hard around the sides of John's thighs, holding him up, keeping him in place. They're going to leave bruises: delineated points marking Ronon's fingertips, and wider splotches to signify his palms.

John wants them as much as he wants the abrasions on his back, as much as he wants every single thing that Ronon is giving him right now, which is more than his cock or the sex or anything so easy to name.

Ronon's eyes are open, have been open since his first _push_ into John, and his gaze is naked and intense. Once it catches John's he realizes it's also inescapable. Not that John is trying to escape. He's not. He doesn't want to be anywhere except where he is right now, with Ronon, in this space they've made their home, in this life that is theirs and no one else's.

John's arms have fallen to his sides, somewhere along the way, and are dangling and grasping at empty air. It takes concerted effort and he has to time it to Ronon's thrusts, but eventually he lifts them and get his hands where he wants them: tangled in the dreads at the very back of Ronon's neck, the skin of which is always hypersensitive because it's usually hidden and covered.

Ronon shudders and arches into the touch, then leans harder against John, his weight more solid and present.

"John," he says, his voice clear and sharp. The crispness of it startles John into coherence, so that his perception after he blinks is less fuck-dumb and he can see the unbending peace and acceptance in Ronon's expression. "I forgive you," Ronon says.

John comes with a suddenness that takes his sight, his hearing, and brings a dry sob up from the depths of his gut, where it's been lodged since he left Colorado Springs, left _Ronon_. He shakes and trembles in the aftermath, and it seems like only Ronon's weight and hands and cock are keeping him from floating away because he feels too light and hollow now that that something is gone.

Ronon comes not long after, the arch of his body drawn with taut lines and slick skin when he goes still and groans, his eyes never leaving John's face, and his expression never wavering. John inhales, deep and unsteady, and lets that place inside of him fill up with the weight of this moment, with the density of Ronon and him. Them. We. Us.

They stumble upstairs when they can move, Ronon practically carrying John, whose knees are aching from how tightly he had his legs wrapped around Ronon. Once they're in bed John pulls Ronon's clothes off with uncoordinated and inefficient motions. Ronon doesn't seem to mind that clumsiness and when John finally manages to get him naked, he stretches and burrows down against the mattress.

John props himself up on one shaking arm and fits his the palm of his other hand to the side of Ronon's neck. "Did you mean what you said?"

Ronon nods solemnly, his eyes watchful. "I would have said it before. I didn't realize."

For as large and harsh as Ronon is, he's always been full of grace. John's never been more grateful for that, or more humbled.

Ronon pushes up on one elbow, careful not to dislodge John's hand, and frowns uncertainly. "Will you let it go now?"

John spent a year running from what he lost when they took Atlantis away from him and in the process he left behind everyone important to him. It was childish, selfish and every other thing Rodney's accused him of being. John's been carrying the guilt of it around since before he actually asked Ronon to come to California and there's nothing about that he wants to hold on to, wants to keep carting around with him.

"Yeah. Yeah, I will."

Ronon smiles, contented and sweet, and falls back against the mattress. He pulls John to him, and John goes without reservation.

*

.End


End file.
